Having a project come in On-Budget is the holy-grail of project
management, especially when it comes to CRM projects. With their
70% failure rate, CRM projects represent a significant risk to a
small business' financial health and warrants more "measure
twice, cut once" consideration before beginning.
Coming in On-Budget does not mean you managed to squeeze your
project into whatever arbitrary budget you came up with when you
first started. It also doesn't mean that you started with an
overly generous budget.It does mean that you develop a budget
that takes into account an analysis of 4 critical areas:
1. Payoff. You need to know
exactly how your CRM
system is going to generate ROI. This will help you focus your
project on the right areas. By knowing how you expect payoff to
be achieved, you can plan to achieve it.
2. Risk. You need to figure out where the risk is in your
project because "risk=expense". By figuring out what can go
wrong, you can take measures to minimize and contain that risk.
3. Services. Be sure to
fully account for the
variety of services that will be required. A few often
overlooked areas that can increase your services bill
significantly incoude: meetings, testing time, debugging time
and "while you're here..." time.
4. Technology. Choosing the wrong technology is can be a
huge waste of money. From the worst case scenario of a totally
failed project to having to spend extra money to make the wrong
software do things it wasn't intended to do.
What makes putting together a realistic budget so difficult for
small businesses is that it's not what they do and they don't
have the experience of having done several before. It's not what
they do. So, they rely on the Sellers of CRM who have their own
vested interest in not scaring off their customers with numbers
that are perceived to be too expensive.
By putting together a realistic budget, you may very well find
that the project is going to cost much more than you were
intitally prepared to spend. It's best to find this out now and
before you "sign on any dotted lines". If you do find out the
project is going to cost more, here are a few ideas of what to
do:
Wait & Save. Perhaps you need to wait 6 months until you
have a bigger budget. Use this time to get prepared for the
project: learn more about the software choices, make sure you're
business processes are as fine tuned as they can be, and focus
on how CRM software will generate ROI.
Go ahead. It may be more money than you were expecting,
but may still be within your budget. If you're clear on how the
CRM system is going to generate ROI and you're otherwise ready,
go for it!
Scale Down. If you have a very clear idea of how the CRM
software is going to achieve ROI and you can't afford the full
project, focus in a smaller area to begin with that will have a
payback. Use this payback to help fund future projects. It's
always a good idea to start with smaller, high-payoff projects
first.
Find more ROI. If you have a really clear and compelling
business case for how a CRM system is going to improve your
bottom-line, it's much easier to find the necessary funds to
implement it.
Double Check. Make sure you're choosing the right
technology. Cheap software can often be expensive to implement.
Double check to make sure you're basing your budget on the right
CRM software. You may find that a software that costs more in
licensing, ends up being an overall more affordable solution.
Coming in On-Budget means you started with a
realistic budget. The "Insider's CRM Success System"
goes into great detail on how to develop a realistic budget and
provides the control forms and worksheets you'll need.
About the author:
Scott Gingrich is the creator of "
The
Insider's CRM Success System", the world's most complete and
only CRM Success System guaranteed to save thousands, developed
specially for small business. Subscribe to the
CRM">www.crmstreetsmarts.com">CRM Street Smarts Newsletter.
www.thecrmcoach.com.
